From Surgery: A Long Road to History

Abstract

I have often been asked to explain my journey from surgeon to medical historian. Although the road was long, I saw both my interests as forms of creative art, complementing one another. Born into a cultural family in Eastern Europe, with classical and operatic music resounding within the walls of our small apartment, and with a respectable library, our happiness lasted until two totalitarian regimes destroyed our family's physical and spiritual health. Medicine was my all-consuming ambition, a vocation displacing everything else. For 37 years, while orthopaedic and spinal surgery preoccupied me entirely, music provided a permanent stimulation and art history a pleasure. Only much later, stabilised in my professional and family environment, could I return to my artistic interests.